“Are you going to share the theory?” Hunsaker asked.
“I think someone thinks you saw something,” Ilykova said. “Did you?”
Carmichael shrugged and shook her head.
“It would’ve been when you two were alone together.”
She shook her head again. “Nothing.”
He grunted as if he didn’t believe her. He continued to work.
After a long moment, he said softly, “Well, I think I found something.”
* * * *
“What did you find?” Hunsaker asked. Carmichael crowded close. Richard didn’t answer right away. First he made certain no one else could hear. He checked the doors, and looked up the stairwell.
When he came back to the desk, he spoke as softly as he could. He explained his idea—that he search for expertise, not motive. He didn’t discuss how he feared the database would be limited (it was, but it didn’t matter, he’d found enough).
“When I searched for expertise in environmental systems, I got two names. I expected at least one from the crew, but that was wrong.”
“Which names?” Carmichael sounded panicked for the first time since he saw her down here.
“William Bunting and Lysa Lamphere.”
“Bunting,” Hunsaker said. “He was the one who yelled at Agatha Kantswinkle, you said.”
Carmichael nodded.
“But,” Richard said, “whoever killed Agatha and went after you, Susan, had a short window to do so. You had your room assignments already. Did you let anyone in your room?”
“Janet Powell,” Carmichael said. “But I never left her alone and she never went near the controls.”
“Anyone else?”
She shook her head.
“Where were you after we found Agatha’s body?”
“I didn’t leave the room,” Carmichael said.
“Except to buy clothing,” Hunsaker said.
“Yes,” Carmichael said. “I bought clothing. But Bunting couldn’t’ve done it then. He was in the boutique with me.”
She used the word boutique with a touch of sarcasm. Richard frowned for a moment. Bunting had yelled at Agatha Kantswinkle, and made her cry. She wouldn’t have let him near her. But another woman…?
“Did she have any troubles with Lysa?” Richard asked.
Carmichael shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m not even sure they spoke.”
He didn’t want to push her too hard. “Did you see either William Bunting or Lysa Lamphere that night you were alone with Agatha?”
“Lysa,” Carmichael said. “But it was no big deal. She had forgotten something in the dining area. She went past us, looking a bit concerned. It wasn’t important.”
“Past you from where?” he asked.
“I assume she came from her room,” Carmichael said.
“But you were walking Agatha to her room.”
“Yes,” Carmichael said.
“From the dining area.”
“Yes.”
“Which was nowhere near Lysa’s room.”
Carmichael looked at him.
“Her room was in a whole different area of the ship.”
“And the fire started not too far from Agatha’s room,” Carmichael said.
Richard nodded. He felt certain they knew who the killer was now. Lysa Lamphere had killed Agatha and gone after Carmichael because they could tie her to the entire event.
“It all sounds so nice and pretty,” Hunsaker said, “until you remember that Lysa nearly died from inhaling the same toxic air that Agatha died from.”
“Did she?” Richard asked. “She went into the room, made the switch with the environmental controls, maybe even watched Agatha die, and then switched them back. She waited until everything cleared a bit, and then went through her charade. I have a hunch if we search her room, we’ll find some small breathing equipment, something she hid before going back to ‘discover’ Agatha.”
“Why would she do that?” Carmichael asked.
They were all so naïve. Or maybe he wasn’t naïve enough. It seemed obvious to him. Once he had Lysa’s name, he understood how everything happened. And a little bit of why.
“So that no one would ever suspect her. You ruled her out even after I discovered her expertise because she had suffered as well.”
He almost added, any good professional would’ve done that. But he didn’t. Still, he saw the way Hunsaker looked at him. Hunsaker knew that.
“May I have the pad?” Hunsaker asked.
Richard handed him the pad, bracing for the next question, which came with predictable swiftness.
“I don’t suppose you have expertise in environmental systems?” Hunsaker asked.
Richard resisted the urge to smile. “No, I don’t.”
“I will check,” Hunsaker said.
“Do,” Richard said. “But remember what I told you before. I wouldn’t have started the fire. If you want to scuttle a ship, there are better and quicker ways to do it. She didn’t want us all to die. She knew we were close.”
“But why kill five people?” Carmichael asked.
“That’s what I mean to find out,” Richard said.
* * * *
It took a bit of work. Buried deep in all the information was one single tie. To the mathematician. His new job was a promotion, one she didn’t feel he deserved. She had studied under him, and he had refused to grant her a degree, saying she was sloppy. She moved to engineering, and graduated, although not with honors, and not in a way that gave her any currency in any job. She would’ve needed more education for that.
She had boarded that ship with a plan to follow him to Ansary, maybe destroy his career there. Or maybe kill him. But she didn’t.
Trista died because she had seen the murder, and she planned to do something about it. Lysa had never planned for Trista’s body to be discovered. She probably thought the fire would’ve been found sooner. By the time someone had found it, the entire ship went into a panic. Which, if Richard thought about it, meant that her calculations had been off.
Professor Grove, the mathematician had been right about her after all. Her math skills hadn’t been up to the task.
Then Agatha Kantswinkle and Susan Carmichael had seen Lysa in that area, and if there were an investigation, they might’ve mentioned her. She didn’t want to risk it. So she planned the last two murders, and might’ve gotten away with all of it, if Hunsaker hadn’t moved Carmichael out of her room.
What Richard couldn’t figure out was why she killed Remy Demaupin.
“I didn’t,” Lysa snarled. They had tied her up and moved her to the bar, along with all the other passengers. No one wanted to be alone any longer. They all worried that Richard and Hunsaker and Carmichael had caught the wrong person, even though Lysa had made it pretty clear from the moment she got tied up that they hadn’t.
“What do you mean you didn’t kill Remy,” Carmichael said. “We know you did.”
Lysa shook her head. “He killed himself,”